Verne Global, a provider of sustainable data centre solutions, has been acquired by Digital 9 Infrastructure (D9) for approximately £231 million in cash.
UK-based D9 is a newly established investment trust that invests in a range of digital infrastructure assets and is keen on “green and cleaner power” in line with UN Sustainable Development Goal 9, to “build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation”.
The acquisition of Verne Global, which is a UK-headquartered company but operates a 100% renewable powered data centre campus based in Iceland, “reaffirms this strategy”. D9 also points to its recent subsea investment in Aqua Comms, as it aims to decarbonise digital infrastructure by increasing access to data centres in areas where there are abundant supplies of clean energy.
Thor Johnsen, Head of Digital Infrastructure at Triple Point, D9’s Investment Manager, states: “For society to meet key decarbonisation goals, we need to look for ways to shift energy consumptive activities to areas of surplus renewable energy. The digital infrastructure industry has an increasing energy footprint, particularly data centres, which need to become more energy efficient and green.”
The deal is certainly not just about the UK as D9 is pursuing further fibre network opportunities to improve connectivity into the Nordics.
Verne Global was founded in 2007. Its partners include Dell and Intel. According to Crunchbase, Verne Global has received $125 million (£90.3 million) funding to date.
Operational since 2012, Verne Global’s 40 acre campus is located on a former NATO Command Centre in Keflavik, and chosen for its “low risk of natural disaster”. It’s also located between the world’s two largest data centre markets, Europe and North America. The campus has been designed from the ground up to provide “high intensity” compute workloads, including AI, machine learning, high performance computing (HPC) and supercomputing. The campus is used by various industries, including financial services, earth sciences, life sciences, engineering, scientific research and AI.
D9 explains that its portfolio will comprise “future proofed, non-legacy, scalable” platforms and technologies including (but not limited to) subsea fibre, data centres, terrestrial fibre, tower infrastructure and small cell networks (including 5G).
In March, D9 raised over $400 million (£289.1 million) with an IPO on the London Stock Exchange.
The Best Data Centre Companies
Recently, Datamation (a sister publication of eWeek UK), looked at the best data centre companies.
The list comprises Equinix, NTT Global Data Centers, BT Global Services, China Telecom, Sungard Availability Services, AT TOKYO / SECOM Group, Coresite, Digital Realty Trust, CenturyLink/Cyxtera Technologies, CyrusOne, Evoque Data Center Solutions, Global Switch and QTS.
Datamation notes – given the rapid market flux in the data centre industry, remember one key factor in selecting a facility: will it be in business long term? That may be largely impossible to know, but – all things being equal – the larger the data centre vendor, the more stable its market position.
Image courtesy of Verne Global.
